Ep 15: Tyler Norton - Commiserating on Climbing Podcasting

MCing is really, you're trying to like, you're being a conductor. If the crowd is a symphony, you're trying to be the conductor to some extent. There are two things that I remember saying that I regret and that I should apologize for. Who have a terrible record of killing journalists, jailing people for tweeting, and just an awful human rights record. If Janja was American, she would be a superstar. She would be Simone Biles.

Welcome to another episode of the That's Not Real Climbing podcast. I'm your host, Jinni, and I'm excited to introduce my guest, Tyler Norton. Tyler is a fellow competition climbing nerd and podcaster who has been involved in the space much longer than I have. And you may be familiar with his channel, Plastic Weekly. In this episode, we'll talk about what it's like MCing at a World Cup. We'll commiserate on the hardships that come with climbing podcasting,

go over some climbing hot takes, and talk about the upcoming 2024 season. If you end up enjoying this style of comp climbing podcast, be sure to check out the debrief, which is Tyler's podcast on Plastic Weekly. And for now, hope you enjoy this episode with Tyler. Okay, but yeah, let's get right into it. So sounds good. I know you're not a huge fan of

describing yourself, but I think people need a little bit of an introduction of how you got into climbing, how you got into competitions, and I guess your knowledge on the history of climbing. Yeah. Well, I think I started climbing like most people. It's just you get dragged to a gym, whether it's your idea or somebody else's, but had a great time. At this point, I've been working in it for about 15 years almost, and been really fortunate to do a lot of things in all different

parts of the sport. So aside from setting and coaching and customer experience at climbing gyms here in Canada, also getting to organize a lot of competitions through our provincial bodies. Got to MC a World Cup one time, got to go to a bunch of World Cups, either dragging behind some of the Canadian kids and just watching them do their thing. But yeah, just a lot of little bits of exposure here and there through the time working in gyms got me really interested.

About I guess six or seven years ago, started up Plastic Weekly as a sort of expression of wanting to contribute to the conversation and wanting to talk to people who, in my professional life, I didn't have a reason to. And yeah, that's kind of the story. So I've just been really fortunate to get to experience lots of different parts of climbing. Most people, I don't think, get a chance to do that. Or most people don't last long enough in climbing before they find

better pay and then whatever somewhere else. But yeah, that's just the reality of climbing, I guess. Yeah, unfortunately. How long after you started climbing, did you start working at the gym and doing everything else? Also, you never told me that you MC'd at a World Cup. That's pretty fun. Yeah. Yeah, it was 2015, a Toronto Boulder World Cup. It's the deep lore of me and Pete Woods. Toronto hosted a World Cup 2013, 2014, 2015. And in the first two years, it was Pete Woods and a

Toronto local, Dave Voltan, I think. They were the duo for MCing it. Not commentating it, just MCing it. And then the last year, I think Pete had a personal engagement somewhere in Europe. He couldn't make it. And I had been MCing a bunch of local comps in the area and I got asked to do it, which was very kind. And yeah, it was a wild experience. But yeah, I started climbing at a time where I didn't really have a strong career path. I had dropped out a couple of times with different

programs and stuff. So it was probably about a year and a half, properly. But right away, and it may have been the same thing for you, was you get into climbing as a climber and very quickly you have lots of questions and you're fascinated by how does this gym work? How do these comps work? And all this curiosity led me to volunteering in different things. And it was a

small new gym at the time. The community was just starting to build out. And so I kind of, by benefit of being one of the few familiar faces around through volunteering and so on, got a job and just kept kind of going up the tree just because I stuck around, I guess. But yeah, so not very long. Interesting. No, I mean, yeah, I do not have the similar experience at all. It took me several years before I feel like I actually got into climbing, even though I was climbing on a regular

basis. Yeah, I feel like I followed the path where it was like I had never done any sports before and I wasn't particularly good. I just liked climbing for fun. And then I plateaued at like V3, V4-ish, as people do. And then I didn't really have that passion because I plateaued for so long. And it wasn't until COVID happened that I kind of got out of that funk. Oh, interesting. So I'm similar to you in that I wasn't into any sports before climbing.

And I think that's part of why I loved it so much was it was the first time I felt remotely like a well-rounded person. Because as a kid, I had never been told I was like an athlete or, you know, sporty or anything like that. So I really appreciated that. But for me, and it may be different for you, was the climbing was fun, but I was really curious how the industry worked very

quickly. It was like, who puts up all those questions that you get from people that you probably talk to like, is there a map for the holds and who makes the holds and who makes the walls and is it fastest to the top in a competition? All those questions was what got me the most psyched, I guess, really early on. So very quickly, I stopped caring about getting good at climbing for whatever reason. And it was just all about like, oh, I want to be behind the scenes in this.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, no, I didn't care at all. I didn't care. And then I wanted to get good. And then to get good, I wanted to learn about all of that. Gotcha. Have you done stuff in your life where you start something and you're immediately like, I need to master this? Is that something in your personality or what?

No, never. Yeah, I'm not a perfectionist. I do things and then I'm pretty half-hearted about it until I reach that certain point that's like, oh, I'm good at this and now I can actually, I've unlocked the fun parts and now I'm really into it. Gotcha. So I think that's what happened. Okay. But yeah, I wanted to learn about all the behind the scenes because I think that'll help me get better myself as well.

That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Back to, well, I wanted to get more into about you and seeing stuff because that sounds

like a lot of fun. And you also did like commentating as well, right? Yeah. I think, I don't know where it started, but probably just having a bit of like a music background means I'm not, I don't really deal with stuff that I'm not really into. I'm not, I don't really deal with stage fright at all. And I'm pretty comfortable being in front of like a large crowd of people. So just some local cops at, you know, starting out at the gym

that I worked at at the time. The famous Canadian bouldering tour is called the Tour de Bloque up here. And it's kind of, it's slowly fizzled out over time, but that was, you know, every gym in Canada wanted to host a stop on the Tour de Bloque. And of course we did for a bunch of years and I were just MC for the finals, you know, I, and I did that for a few years. And I guess at some point that transitioned to commentating when the gyms were starting to feel more comfortable about like,

Hey, let's splurge for a live stream. Wouldn't that be a cool, like fun thing to do? But yeah, the MCing was, was just, I was willing to do it. Whereas a lot of people aren't, they might not be interested in, in, you know, having a lot of eyes on you and having to talk for a long period of time. But I've always felt pretty confident in my ability to like fake it on a microphone and so on. Yeah. I've had a lot of good role models when it comes to like stagecraft. So, so even if I'm not

great, I'm still comfortable with it. But yeah, the, the, the world cup one was, was wild because at that point I would have only like live witnessed maybe two world cups, like a speed world cup in 2013 and a boulder world cup in 2014. And I'd watched a bunch and I'd been to a bunch of like, well, I guess the other big ones would be like ABS nationals, like the American boulder series. And I had always thought like, Oh, what a cool job it is to be the guy with the microphone and

have to introduce everybody and have to create that hype. So I had a few influences, but something about the world cup with just like how long the days are. And maybe the fact that it was in a hockey arena that this world cup was in something about the acoustics, the crowd was really loud. And it was a ton of fun. I remember, I think it was Tsukuruhori maybe gashed open his finger.

And for whatever reason, I thought it would be appropriate to like commentate everything that was happening, like with the medics and him dealing with all the blood and the event organizer had to come over and just be like, you can stop, you can stop talking about the finger injury now. So I was like, okay. But yeah, ended that comp, I guess the Sunday night after finals, like super worn out. I just like felt like I was about to black out. I was a little bit dizzy and I was just like,

you're just exerting yourself for a couple of days. And yeah, it was a pretty like strenuous experience of trying to maintain hype for like two days straight. It was wild, but like a really cool opportunity. And I haven't had it since and that's okay. I don't know if I want it again. It was really long, but very cool. Very cool to see it like all up front. And that was actually

like my favorite climber Anna Sturr's very last gold medal event was that one. So there's this, I have this crazy memory that I get to keep for the rest of my life of being the person that gets to say, and in first place, blah, blah, blah, Anna Sturr for the last time of her career. And so like, if I've got a handful of like best memories ever in climbing, that's definitely one

of them. That's not super exciting. I so I've never been to a World Cup in person. So I didn't even think about there being an MC there because you obviously don't hear that during the live streams. Since you've done both MCing and commentating, what do you feel like are the differences there and which one do you prefer? Yeah, I certainly prefer commentating because you're allowed to

talk about more and you don't have to yell as much. And also I might not have been a great MC. I may have done like too much yelling, but MCing is really, you're trying to like, you're being a conductor. If like, if the crowd is a symphony, you're trying to be the conductor to some extent. You're trying to help lead them towards big moments and you try to cue it all up. So everybody's like amped up right when somebody gets a top and that's cool by itself. But commentary is nice because

it's usually a bit more conversational and you can actually talk about beta for instance. Or, you know, if Jakob Schubert is climbing a boulder, you would be permitted to say to the stream like, well, this is what Mejdi did and this is what Adam did. Whereas obviously as an MC, you're not allowed to just yell into a loudspeaker microphone what just happened that breaks all the rules of isolation and you know, beta sharing and stuff like that. So I certainly prefer the commentary. I wish MCs got

to, it got to do a little bit more of what, of what commentators do. I think audiences at events could, could be a little more in the know and, and maybe have a better experience if somebody was giving a bit more actual information and context to what was happening rather than just screaming platitudes, trying to get people psyched up, you know, make some noise and stuff. But yeah, I, I certainly prefer commentary. That's definitely the place to be if you're going to do

either of them, I think. Yeah, that's super interesting. I feel like MCs need more credit. It's a, it's really, it's a skill for sure. It's a kind of, can be kind of embarrassing, I bet. Yeah. I think like all these things, if you just put yourself out there into a microphone, there's a lot of, you know, if you're, if you're too self-aware, you can really bottle yourself up. I think you have to just be willing to kind of like go with the moment and hope you don't come

off as insincere. That's, that's always my biggest worry is that people are going to be like, who the hell is this guy? Like, why, why is he talking into a microphone? That's my like, you know, what, what gets me all nervous. But yeah, it's long days and you're just like kind of yelling the whole time. It's not the most fun thing in the world for sure. Yeah, I could never, I bring much more of like a calming nervous energy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah.

But okay. And so you've done all that. How did you get started on the podcast?

The gym I worked at at the time was a pretty big commute from where I lived. So I was listening to a lot of podcasts for the first time in my life. And I think a bunch of different podcasts made me think, oh, there's room for this in climbing. At the time, the only climbing podcast that was like focused on competitive and indoor climbing was called, uh, shock talk, by a guy named John Blomquist. And sadly, I think they're all gone. I think like, I don't know what

host he used, but I think they're just erased from the internet, which really sucks. Cause he had a bunch of great interviews with, you know, hold shapers and gym people and competitive climbers and gym owners and stuff. Him and Jackie Huffley, who's involved with Kilter grips now, they would do after every world cup, they would do kind of a roundup, kind of like what plastic weekly does. It was a shorter format and it talked kind of about different things.

But that was really cool. So there wasn't a whole lot of content at the time. And I thought, you know, wouldn't it be neat if somebody was talking about issues in Canadian gyms or Canadian comp climbing and then, well, there's only so much to talk about in Canada. So let's do some American stuff. So, you know, I just bought a, you know, bought one of those little audio interfaces for

microphones and, um, yeah, I went around to places just recording with people for the most part. I think I recorded all of them like face to face, um, just with a Mac book and a couple crappy little sure mics. And then over time started using like a digital interface or like online interfaces, like the one we're using right now. Uh, and that kind of led to where the podcast is a video product came up. Um, yeah, just kind of that evolution from audio to video, I guess.

Yeah. So I guess you managed to do a lot of interviews with, um, I guess through working at the gym and going to competitions that way. Yeah. If you're a coach and you travel to a lot of competitions, you do meet a lot of people. You meet a lot of other coaches, you meet a lot of like comp organizers, you meet gym owners and stuff like that. And so after coaching for like five-ish years, you start to feel like you really know everybody in Canada that's involved with comps.

Um, so within Canada, it was pretty easy to talk to people. Um, if I wanted to speak to Americans, it was more of like, hi, I'm a random dude, you know, can I bother you for an hour or something like that? But within Canada, it's a pretty small community ultimately. So it wasn't too hard. Did you mention that you were a coach or did I just totally miss that? I did not know that you

were a coach. I might've buzzed over it. Yeah. I was just coaching kids. Um, and, uh, uh, um, yeah, it was, it was just, you start as a rec coach and you kind of follow your kids up and a couple of them ended up at a world youth championship in 2015. So that was like another big moment getting

to meet lots of like international people. Um, yeah, I got to go to the one of the ARCO ones, which at the time I was aware that ARCO is a, I knew factually that it was like a historic place, but until, you know, years later, when I started the podcast and started doing more historical research, did I realize like, Oh, I was in a really, in a really special place, like one of

the very like foundational competitions in, in like Western competition history. Um, yeah. So a little bit of coaching, I wouldn't say I'm like, uh, coaching is something I'll probably never do again. I don't have the drive for it. I don't have a personal like competitive background. So I think I was pretty good at working with kids, keeping them happy, making sure they have a good time, keep them safe. But when it comes to like trying to build a competitive drive, um, I don't

have that myself. I can't really relate to that part of the human condition. So, so I kind of maxed out how much I could do in coaching, I guess. Yeah. Okay. And so, um, with the podcast, it seems like now you're more so doing debrief with, um, John and instead of doing interviews. Um, yeah. Why did you sort of pivot away from, from the interview? Yeah. Anybody that's followed

plastic weekly for a long time. First of all, like the name has become a joke by itself. Um, and I've kept it because it's a good reminder to stay humble about your ambitions and what you're capable of. I thought it was going to be a weekly podcast. I would publish every week. I thought I was going to do an audio thing with like two or three interviews every single week in one episode. And between that being like way too much work, I just, the way my life works, the way my

personality works, I started having these months where nothing would come out. And over the seven years of the podcast, that's a recurring pattern, right? There will be content for a bunch of months and then I'll just disappear for a couple. And, and I'm starting to learn to live with that, especially because it's not the thing that pays my bills. And the other big part of my life is still climbing, right? Like I spend almost all of my time in the week talking about climbing and

thinking about climbing and worrying about it. And so it is a little hard to get home and want to dive right back in sometimes, especially during the winter time when it is kind of busy season for gyms in, uh, in the Northern hemisphere. Um, so it's, it's had lots of ups and downs, but the thing about John that was great was I had wanted to try this format possibly since John Blomquist stopped doing his on shock talk. And so I was thinking like, wouldn't it be cool if we

could do this kind of thing? Like the kind of content that's really at the time was really popular in like e-sports circles where it is just two guys on Skype talking for a couple hours. And I was digging around trying to find like, okay, who's actually writing about competitions? Who's, who's the person covering this stuff? And it's a really short list, but John was right there at the time writing for climbing magazine. And so I shot him a message and we're like,

Hey, can we do this? And of course he was great. He's a sports nerd in general. It's not just climbing. He just loves sports and he's fluent in that kind of discussion, uh, which was a good counter to me where I don't have a lot of history of being a sports fan. Um, so he brings this great experience as somebody that understands like fundamentally the experience of being a sports fan, of being a sports journalist and me coming from a different angle. That's a little bit more

naive about those things and more of kinda, I'm used to working in the background. I'm used to, you know, maybe being involved with the organization of events. So it was a really cool dynamic, but the real key thing is it's where I discovered that having a partner to do one of these introduced a new level of accountability to make sure it gets done. Because now it's not just me failing myself. If I don't put out a piece of content now I'm failing John. If I don't reach out

to him and say, Hey, we got to do this Tuesday. I've got a guest and all that kind of stuff. So it made it much easier to do things because there was somebody that I was going to disappoint directly and somebody that I like love deeply and I don't want to disappoint him or leave him hanging. So that's the key to the longevity so far of the debrief is that he's just there. He adds that extra layer.

No, that's awesome. And seven years doing this is, I mean, quite a feat. I kind of wanted to, I guess, commiserate on highlights and like biggest struggles of dealing with the podcast. Yeah. What have been your highlights?

That's a good question, man. Highlights of the podcast. That's like, honestly, maybe like the first time somebody like wrote me a letter, like sent me like actual mail. That was sick. I used to have this really lame way of ending the podcast. I think I said something like, you know, if you enjoyed this, like shoot me a message, just let me know you're out there somewhere. And for whatever reason, some people would occasionally like write a letter, which

is amazing. And that was really gratifying. Highlights otherwise was maybe starting to feel like I'm becoming friends with the other people who are covering climbing, like really struggling to keep the tabs on this stuff. Like it's a very small group of people, especially in English, that are actually trying to keep track of the evolution of the sport. It's people like, you know, John, obviously Delaney Miller as well over at climbing, Natalie Berry, of course.

And then some names that are fading out, like Eddie Fouke. He did five incredible years as the official IFC photographer and things really went south, unfortunately, around the pandemic. But that guy is, the amount of institutional memory in that one person is wild and he needs to write a book like as soon as possible, because for five years he was living on athletes' couches and shooting the comps and flying with the athletes and taking all of their pictures, making sure to

take a picture of every single face at the comp and qualifiers. Like from, what was it for him, 2014 to 2019 or something? He is the memory of record for the athlete experience. And sadly, he's kind of phasing out. I think he's found other things that he loves and he's definitely earned the ability to move on. But getting to meet these people has been amazing. And the one or two of them that I might talk to outside of an interview is really rewarding. Yeah, I don't know.

The low points, I'm trying to think of the lowest point. Have you ever had somebody, have you ever published an interview and then the subject messages you and says, like, hey, can you take it down within the day that you've put it up or anything like that? What's your, do you have any disaster stories? No, holy crap, if that happened to me, I might just

shut everything down. Yeah, for real. It's silly. Yeah. I don't know. I had, it was somebody involved in like hold shaping back when it was an audio podcast and we recorded it and it was great. And there was nothing that I thought was like remotely troubling. But yeah, it was up for maybe like 12 hours. And then I got an email while I was just like out of the house saying like, hey, can you edit this out? And I was like, I can't edit it out like right now. It's kind of busy.

So I ended up taking an episode down and republishing it later after having clipped some stuff out. But that was like really frustrating. Okay. I thought you meant like you just couldn't publish the entire episode. No, it was a particular, yeah, it was just one particular area, but it was like it kind of ruined an entire line of questioning because we kind of started talking about I think like quality control and liability and stuff. I think that's what it was about. But yeah,

that does make it difficult. But no, I thought it was more of like a personal thing. Like, hey, this went up and now I hate you and I don't want to go ahead. I want to hear it's like what some of your highlights are low points. Low points are honestly more fun, frankly, but it's not even like nothing bad has really happened. It's just my fear of bad things happening that just gives

me this constant anxiety about it. Sure. Like, um, I don't know if you see if you're like on TikTok or anything, but I see a lot of videos, um, talking about, uh, like anxious attachment styles. And I think in my personal life, I don't have an anxious attachment style, but in like podcast guests, it's like, you need this like constant, uh, communication or like you need to always be in the interview or like in the, in the like lead up to it, lead up, I think, or that's like

what anxious attachment is. Like you need to be constantly reassured that you're like, okay. Or like the person is so this explains like the nine reminder emails I've gotten like in the last day. Okay. Gotcha. I understand now. See, I didn't know that it sends that actually. I haven't been sending anything that might be like the calendar invite. You've, you've programmed the system well to do what you internally want it to do. Good job. No one's told me that that happens.

But yeah, that like doesn't happen to me in my personal life, but since starting this podcast, I get so worried when someone does not like respond to me or if like I had them on and then they're like busy after, um, and they like, don't respond to my message. I'm like, oh my God, they hated the podcast. They hate the interview. They don't like me. They don't want it to go up. They don't want to post it. They're like not happy with the conversation. And so that, that's the biggest,

that's probably the biggest low light for me. I like, don't know how people feel after. How do you feel like you've had a real blunder though? Cause like there are two, there are two things that I remember saying that I regret and that I should apologize for. They weren't necessarily like mean or offensive, but I felt like, Oh, that didn't come across the way I wanted it to,

to that person. And I feel like I may have possibly hurt them. And I'm almost certainly overthinking it, but there are two people in the universe who I really need to just message at some point and be like, Hey, I haven't heard from you since we spoke years ago. I just wanted to make sure you don't think that I think you're a total idiot or something like that. I don't know. There's just a couple of things like that. I don't know if you've, if you felt that way. No, that I don't

think that's happened. At least if I think I say something stupid, I can edit that out. To the person, I think I tend to err on like the safe side, but do you want to go into what stupid things you said, or is that too haunting for you? I feel like I should apologize to them personally, but one, one was, I just made a, I made a quip. I think it was a conversation about like, you know, talking about who our candidates would be for maybe like best boulders ever some, like some like fairly

just like hypothetical conversation. And I think I, when they gave their answer, I suggested like, Oh, I'm surprised you didn't say this person, which kind of suggested that I thought they had a really basic outlook on like climbing, like, Oh, I assumed you would have picked this name because you're dumb or whatever. Like that's how I was afraid it would be read. And then the other

one, I'll just say this out loud, cause it's so, so stupid, but just like off the cuff. And this is where you really forget some of these climbers are young, but I forgot Colin Duffy was like 16 at the time. And I just made a joke that he has big ears, which normally just in general, I wouldn't be too harsh about that. Like my, like where I come from, people make fun of each other's looks to our faces all the time. And you're just like busting each other's balls. But like right after I said it,

I was like, Oh, this guy's a child. Like I think of him as a, as a climber that's been on the scene for like as long as I have, even though he was only 16. But instantly I was like, you know what? That was too far. Yeah. There's just like little, little blunders that come up and you're like,

okay, at least I'm going to learn from that. I'm going to remember when I'm talking about these young athletes like, you know, Cheyenne So or I am more like, especially if I'm making jokes that I would consider appropriate for adults, I have to remember, even though they're like pro athletes,

that is a kid. And I do need to like dial in a certain amount of restraint when it comes to, you know, you know, for all the talk about red S, which is kind of like code for a lot of, it's not quite the same, but it kind of falls in the same stream as like body image issues. And especially when we're dealing with kids, that's like, absolutely not stuff that some dumb, like at the time 27 year old should be tripping in on like the looks of a 16 year old kid. Right?

So that's a mistake I am doing my best to not make ever again. Fortunately, I don't think anybody ever like watched that episode. So, I mean, it wasn't like in front of them. No, it wasn't. It was just one of those things that you're just like, oh, I'm an idiot. And why did I say that in front of a microphone? Like that was recording, right? Well, I mean, the nice thing is that you could just edit it out. I don't know if that was on my show that might've been on somebody else's.

I think, yeah. But anyway, I mean, you can always ask them to edit it out, but yeah, I guess that's kind of the good part of having the show. Cause then you can make yourself look however you want. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that doesn't happen to me too often because my podcast is focused a lot more on, I guess, like me learning about the competition space. And I thought your whole brand was roasting teenagers. I mistook your podcast. I thought

that was the whole thing. No, I would love to have like a young climber on. I think that would be really interesting, but yeah, if that becomes my brand, maybe, maybe I shouldn't do that. They would get clicks. It would, but yeah, I think one of your greatest like strength, strengths and abilities with your podcast is your ability to open up discussion and discourse on things that happen with Incomps, whereas mine is more just like interviewing and learning about

the person and what they do within the competition space. But yeah, since that's kind of more of your focus and you talk about what happens within Incomps, what are some of your competition hot

takes? If you were to ask like the plastic weekly crowd, like the, the regular viewers and like people that might make memes about this stuff, it's probably that I am pretty, pretty cautious about using words like greatest of all time and like legend and all those kind of things, which is funny. I don't know if you watched the IFSC debuted their,

their podcast just like yesterday or something. And within the first 10 seconds, Matt, who is excellent at his job, Matt starts by lamenting like the overuse of the term legend and then proceeds

to call Sean McCall like the goat, which just made me want to blow my brains out. Because I think, especially with my concern about like the history of climbing, I think it's really important that we kind of hold back on being too generous with our compliments and the titles we give people, lest we forget how important it actually is when those real people show up, when we have those incredible highs. If you've been calling everybody a legend for the last 10 years, and then an actual

legend shows up, what's this new viewer going to be able to tell the difference, right? If we call every of the six, like, you know, finalists at a Boulder World Cup, for instance, a legend, like every fricking kid, every 16 year old kid, Mejdi is a legend already or something like that. And then a genuine legend, somebody that competed for forever and won a ton of golds, you know,

like Killian Fishuber comes on stage to maybe hand them a medal. And then you then try to call Killian Fishuber a legend after using the exact same word for some 15 year old punk that like, maybe bluff their way into their first ever finals. What does it even matter? Like, what do, like, it's just like an arms race to the most superlative title for athletes. So that does require like a certain amount of awareness of the history of climbing, which just due to my own

personal interests, I happened to delve into that. And I don't expect everybody to do that. It's not, you know, it's not everyone's responsibility to do all the research themselves, especially, you know, for something as like unrewarding as this. But yeah, I think my biggest hot take was like, especially like 2019, when everybody was like, oh, I'm going to call it the goat. I was like, hold off a second. Like if you're going to declare somebody the goat,

here's the mental exercise I need you to do before you drop that title. Okay. If Yanya is the new goat as of June 2019, whenever it was that she won Vail and swept a boulder season, if that made her the goat, who was the goat until that happened? Who was the goat before Yanya? And not many people could even suggest another name in that category. And that was really

disturbing. I don't think that title, because I can't think of a higher title, what is the better compliment to give an athlete aside from like greatest of all time, time, time. That's a really big thing to put on somebody. And so in my like hot take world, that's really disrespectful to drop titles like that. If you can't even think of like, who was the goat right before Yanya or you can't name some other candidates. I think that's like, that's way

too close to hyperbole for a title that important. I think that's like an inappropriate use of it. And I should just clarify all that by saying, I'm not saying Yanya isn't one of the best athletes that climbing has ever seen, or that she may become or maybe she is, but I think that's she may become or maybe she is the greatest climber we've ever seen. I just think you have

to actually understand what you're saying when you give somebody that title. Because in my opinion, there is no bigger title that is the ultimate achievement for anybody that touches climbing. And so that really frustrated me. So anyway, now you've got angry Tyler on the podcast now. But yeah, that's probably, that's probably like the biggest hot take that I can think of. I don't know. There might be some other ones out there, but yeah, get rid of isolation. That's another one.

Please excuse this brief intermission. But I would just like to remind you that if you are enjoying this podcast, please follow and rate it on your preferred listening platform. If you're watching on YouTube, I would love to hear your discussion and thoughts in the comments below. Anything helps to push this podcast out to more people and get even more amazing guests on. Back to the show. I guess first of all, what you mentioned about Yanya, they're not being a previous

goat before Yanya. Doesn't that kind of make it more meaningful that people like are starting to call her a goat? Because like, if there was already a previous one, and they're just like jumping between people. So this is this is my my question is, I so climbing like bouldering has been going on at a World Cup level since like officially 1999. But technically like 97, let's say. So for all of those years, and again, people just refer to Yanya as like the goat without

any qualifiers. I don't know if they're talking about lead climbing or bouldering or both. I have no idea. But for all of those years, say again, I mean, kind of like both is the point like, sure. Yeah, fair enough. My concern there is that there are other female athletes who have excelled in both lead and bouldering. So before Yanya hit the scene, even though that discussion was not taking place on YouTube or taking place on audio podcasts, there was somebody who in different

people's opinions was the best of all time. Right. And maybe it just came up, you know, in live journal feeds, or on somebody's blog, on somebody's flash website that is now defunct and broken and lost to time. But before Yanya, there was a previous best climber. And just because current viewers might not know who those people are, it's not good enough to just be willing to drop that title on somebody, right? Like, maybe the conversation hasn't happened for for all these

for all these new viewers, maybe they weren't aware of who came before. But it's really important before you grant somebody like the greatest, like, let's say, let's say somebody granted you or me the greatest competition podcast of all time, but they have never heard any other competition podcasts aside from ours. That isn't a relevant title to give to either of us, right? I don't know

if they knew about shock talk. I don't know if they are aware that podcasts have only been around for so long and you have to look back to like the, the, like the spot setting blog, or all these different old, you know, blogs and websites that covered that stuff. I think the important thing to realize is that there were climbers that came before Yanya that did incredible things. And just because we don't know their name, it doesn't mean we can just forget about them and skip over them.

I think to call Yanya the goat, I think it's only appropriate to give somebody a title that big. If we can look back at those before her and say, yes, she has actually earned that when you compare Yanya to, for example, a Sandrine Lavey, who was dominating from like 2001 to 2006, or even further to like a Liv Sansos, like let's say 90, 99 to like 2001, 97, I guess. Those are other names.

Those are like before Yanya, those are the people you would have considered as the best of all time that were like interdisciplinary that did both bouldering and lead at a very high level. And those names are pretty much forgotten. So it just hurts when Yanya gets called the goat, but the people dropping that title aren't aware of the people that came before her. So that was my only real grift with the, with the goat discussion was that I think that's a huge

title to give to somebody. And it's really important to reflect on who she's overtaking, you know, for dropping her that, that honorific. But yeah. And now I've gone too far in this discussion. Well, that makes sense. Cause I mean, I would say I'm more of like a newer viewer. So I don't like those previous people. So that's good to know. Do you think it's still like too early for the title? No, I don't think like I, my same, the same things I say now are important. So let's say Yanya ends up

with a hundred gold medals, right? More gold medals than anybody in history. Like that's like many times more than anyone else. I still think it's worth being able to name the people that came before you. Right? Like if somebody says, Oh, Yanya won a hundred gold medals. No one's ever done that before. It's still worth knowing, okay, who's in second place and how many medals do they have? Right? Like that's a basic answer that I think you should be able to find before, before dropping the

title. But in general, I do think Yanya is probably the greatest female lead and Boulder athlete we've ever seen. The hard part is there's very few people in history that have done that. And it might

actually be a historical anomaly in climbing to have athletes doing both. So prolifically, when the Olympics goes to individual disciplines, which we're all quite certain at will at this point, and as the fields get bigger and there's more serious competitors, I can totally see a world where you have to focus on just lead or you have to focus on just Boulder in order to be among the best. Setting has changed over the decades, the nature of competitions and

the incentives for doing one discipline or another, they have all changed. So it's possible we're in this unique little pocket of time where we have all these talents who do both, right? This may not last forever. It hasn't been a very common thing to see repeat finalists in both lead and Boulder in a season. That's kind of pretty out there. And maybe that'll stop again. Who knows? Well, I think that might mean like a future goat would be someone who

can do all of that despite not having to. Maybe. Yeah. And that's the, you know, with these kinds of like subjective titles we give people, that's the hard part is comparing someone in the future who's in a totally different situation than those today, right? The two names I mentioned, Sandrine Lave and Liv Sensos, there was a very different time of climbing for, for Sandrine, the format was entirely different, right? For both disciplines was a

totally different way of competing. The field was very different and there were different amounts of competitions each year. There were generally more comps for most of her years each year. So it was easier to rack up a higher medal count than someone like Yanya, for instance. And for Liv Sensos, her bouldering wins when she swept, it was a 97 or 98, those competitions were entirely within like France and Switzerland. It was a much more, you know, Eurocentric

comp scene. The field was much smaller, but she won all those medals in the same way that Yanya did. So yeah, the context is really different and that's where it's hard to parse, right? If it was as simple as just Yanya has X number of medals, Sandrine has Y and Liv has Z, it would be a simple conversation, but yeah, just the nature of the way it's all evolved, it is much harder. Yeah. Yeah. And then also what you were mentioning about getting rid of isolation. Why?

Yeah, that's like where me as a comp organizer is the driving factor for sure. It was interesting

and Sean and Matt did their podcast yesterday and that was something Sean mentioned to a similar question. For me, one of my goals with bouldering specifically, although it's relevant to lead as well, is to make the competitions a kind of format that requires less formal organization. And ISO requires a little bit more space and it also requires more separation between athletes.

It puts restrictions on who's allowed in certain spaces. So like if you just kind of imagine maybe your home gym or gyms nowadays are like bigger and bigger, so it's maybe not as much of an issue, but the idea of having to like close off an entire wall so nobody can see it often means for different gyms that the venue is just closed and that they're not allowed to be in

gyms that the venue is just closed and nobody's allowed inside. So being able to open up settings so that people can watch the setting or the setting isn't necessarily blocked off would be great. Not having to store athletes who are warming up in a separate room, in a separate building, like the Salt Lake City World Cups, the climbers warm up at the USA training center and then they get put in a car and driven to the venue where they have a secondary warm up.

That's a huge logistical just like waste of time that also costs money, right? And then lastly, just from like a crowd and spectator perspective, honestly, I really like the idea of the crowd being able to yell beta at climbers who are on the wall. That sounds like a blast to me because most people give shit beta in the first place, but I think that would be a lot of fun. Now I don't think there is a comp format necessarily where the only change you make

is just like cross out the isolation part and just use the current World Cup format. That's just like an element to a bouldering competition that I think would be really interesting. And the formats would probably have to be different and there's a bunch of different options for that. Garrett Greger has played around with some of those options. He had a Portland boulder rally a couple of years ago with that kind of concept. I think the guys at the boulder fields did the

same, but I think that would be an interesting like kind of shift. Yeah, I think one time I saw this competition. Maybe it was like the World Games or something where they didn't have isolation and it was just it was on it. Yeah, possibly. So you like literally just want that because of the logistical. Yeah, logistical and I think it opens up I think it makes you think differently about what a boulder comp is. I think right now where it is very much like the athletes are only competing

against the wall. They don't get to see each other. They don't get to climb in response to each other. I don't really love that. And I think if you get rid of ISO, it gives you more options to how a boulder competition for instance would run. So that's just one element, I guess. Yeah. You don't think it'd be like harder for route setters to create separation if they could all see each other climb. I think that's a super relevant concern if you use the

current format. Yeah. So if let's say you are forced to climb a boulder for five minutes, and I just get to watch you for five minutes and then I go after, yeah, I'm gonna have a way better chance of topping thanks to watching you, you know, run some run some attempts on that thing. That's totally true. And that's like one of those reasons why it's probably not compatible with just like a regular World Cup format. You would probably have to make some other changes.

But yeah, I think that's something when people talk about comp formats, it's kind of important to consider like, don't necessarily start with the current format. I think a lot of people's habits are to take the existing World Cup format and want to change individual lines and just make these little adjustments. I think those can really stack up and create problems.

It's often just easier to say, what do I want the experience of the climber to be like? What do I want the experience of the route setter to be like, or the audience member to be like, and start building honestly from scratch. And that's a really fun mental exercise to think about, okay, what do I want scoring to look like? What is the best boulder and how do we get them to demonstrate it in an hour? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what that would be like. I've also seen some like flash

competitions. Like one attempt comps, you mean? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. I love that. That's super fun. Yeah. Now, so long as I guess the one thing I'll say is I don't enjoy the competitions where they get to try the boulders before the comp. I super, super hate that. But yeah, like a comp format we thought would be really fun one time was just to just imagine this as an experiment, okay? A boulder wall with let's say nine boulders on it. And every competitor

gets exactly nine attempts total. And which boulders they get to use those on is up to them. You can use one attempt on every boulder, or you can use some of those on just boulder number one, some of those on boulder number two and boulder number three, and you ignore the next six, right? So now obviously there are like lots of different considerations about how you're going to route set for this, but it's really interesting if you start just like pulling apart comp formats,

completely and just start from fresh. Like you and me, you and me, nine boulders in front of us. We both have nine attempts. Are you going to climb first? Are you going to wait for me to climb first? Which boulder are you going to choose if you're allowed to choose, right? Maybe we just say there's no running order. You just get to start on whichever one you want and you don't have to go in a particular direction. And you can just watch Tyler climb for 30 minutes before you try your attempts.

Like, yeah, I think it's really fun when you start thinking about this stuff. And you also start to realize like, oh, there's a lot of comp format ideas I can try just with me and my friends at the gym. You're just like, Hey guys, there's a new set on the wall. Let's try this thing. We get nine attempts

tonight and we see how many tops we can all get, but you just get nine attempts. So I think that's something people should try out is just like, try a new game with you and your friends and see what's fun. Well, I mean, you are the one who organizes competitions and works at a gym. So I think you're the one who should take that on in my own little way. Yeah, yeah, I try to. Yeah. Okay. Some other hot takes I wanted to see if you had opinions on. A lot of people talk about

not caring about the overall title anymore, I guess, like the season title or like not caring about world champs, other than it being an Olympic qualifier. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I guess I do. Like starting with world championships, it's one of those things you wish you could do every year, right? That's the one sad thing is it certainly feels structured at this

point to be a qualifying event for an Olympic games, which is a little frustrating. I would love it if every year we could have a culminating event where we get to see the best climbers in the world. I think that would be a lot more fun than having it every two years. For the overall, this is a hard one because in climbing our circuit has like relatively few events.

And I think a lot of the awareness of this topic, it's curious, maybe it's not a coincidence that this conversation has come up when F1 has become this new sport that so many of us now have a much better understanding of than we did before. And that sport has a very clear, very important season ranking across the entire year, but they're dealing with something like 20 to 25 races,

I think, every year. And the way it's structured out is there are some drivers in F1 who they might get no score for a bunch of these races because they crash or they come too low in the placings, but you're still able to be competitive even though you miss a few events. In climbing where lately we're pretty much averaging about six events per year for each discipline, if you miss two events and then you have a abnormally low event in one of the other

stops, you're pretty much out. So having an overall season with this number of events is actually functionally really difficult to make it genuinely competitive. So you're going to end up with a lot of situations where because there's so few events and you earn so many points for each one, you can be in the final event of the year and there could be like

10 different people that could win, right? Conversely, you can get to the end of the year and Yanya Garmbrat is at the event and she can be miles ahead of everybody else, but because she missed two events in the season, she is just not in consideration, right? Two events, just two events, and that puts her out. So I think our overall season has some work that needs to be done before

it could be considered a really clean kind of spectator product to understand. I think more focus does need to be put on it because generally the top three people each season had really great seasons and we should laud those people for a great performance. And the basics of this are we should show that overall season podium at the end of the year, right? We should actually see it. I think it was last year or the year before where we didn't even get to see them award the bouldering

podium for the overall season. That's too crappy a way to end a year, right? So we at least got to show those performances. But I think one cool thing that's happening this year, and it probably won't happen every year in the future, but this year ends with an event that is all three disciplines. The final event of the year is going to be speed and bouldering and lead. So this really cool thing is happening where all of those storylines for all three disciplines are going to end at

the same time. And I think that is also a nice improvement where even though technically it's not a world championship, depending on how the year plays out and depending on who's too tired from the Olympics and decides they don't want to show up and depending on who's got the points, you could end up with that final comp of the year having like all the big stars in attendance fighting for those overall points and having all three disciplines doing it. And it kind of becomes

this quasi world championship unofficially. So I'm a little scared. The other two things are kind of tough to talk about because there's just these practical problems with them. But that's one thing I'm really psyched about this season for is ending it with a speed boulder and lead World Cup. It's been since I think 2015, Haiyang in China was the last time there was a World Cup that had all three disciplines in it. So it's really rare. It's really, really rare. But we get one. So I'm psyched.

Yeah. Do you know why they decide to do that this year? So if I remember right, the last World Cup is going to be in South Korea. They are the hosts of the 2025 World Championships, right? So I think what it is, is if you're going to host a world championship, you must, the country that's hosting the World Championship must have hosted events, I believe in all three disciplines in the year before. So it's a really, really rare event.

In the year before. So it's basically written into the book that if you're going to host a world championship, you need to prove that you are capable of running a speed event and a boulder event and a lead event in the year leading up to that. So I'm pretty sure that's probably why it's all happening that way. Korea hasn't held a lead event in I think about 10 years as well, like maybe 2014 or something. We know they can do boulder and speed because we've seen it the last

couple of seasons, I think, but they need to prove it on lead. And so for whatever reason, in terms of like when in the year it is, I don't know why necessarily the IFSC put it at the end of the year, but I believe that's why you're seeing all three happen at one event. LSW Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, when you were talking about the F1 stuff and having like a bunch

of competitions, I didn't know they did that many. That's like an insane amount. I can't imagine at the state competition climbing is in right now that that would be feasible at all considering how expensive it would be for athletes to attend these and then like not even win much money from them, especially given their current budgets. So. CB And there's also not a lot of countries that are able to host world cups. Like hosting world

cups is very expensive. So it's just simply not an option for the most part.

LSW And I think that also reminds me of like the environmental impact that people are talking about when it comes to going to competitions. I think that was a big thing with the like Neom games in like Saudi Arabia. Yeah. Any thoughts on that one? CB I was just really surprised that the environmental angle was the one that everybody

had a problem with for that event. I shouldn't say everybody because I know like within my discord, possibly within your discord on the maybe the comp climbing subreddit, people mentioned the facts that like, oh, hey, this competition is entirely paid for by the Saudi Royals who have a terrible record of killing journalists, jailing people for tweeting, and just an awful human rights record and are diving into all of these different sports right

now because they're in this genuinely unfortunate position where their economy is driven entirely by oil, which the entire world is trying to get away from. And they're realizing, oh, shit, we've got this giant country full of people that need jobs and we can't rely on oil. We have to diversify, which is like a fair objective for any country, right? But the way they're doing that is we're taking our oil money and us as a, you know, a Royal family, we're going to buy up

as many sports properties. I shouldn't just say it's everything. It's technology, it's business. They are trying to just like take these different parts of the world's economy and take it into their kingdom so that they can basically treat it as their own and kind of sustain their country, which is fair. The frustrating part is, you know, in my opinion, the IFSC is a sport organization that is desperate for funding, which is true for the most part.

It doesn't have the funding like a lot of other sports that will change with the Olympics, but most sports money like always seems to be a problem for whatever reason. So we are exactly the kind of people that would be like, yes, absolutely. Please, please give us

whatever money you can take and we'll absolutely host this competition. And I think that same instinct among climbing fans, which may trend towards a more like, like liberal worldview, where we would care about the environmental impact of our sport, even though, you know, every sport out there from the NFL to F1, most of these sports have ginormous environmental impacts.

It's interesting that that, that, that instinct in us to worry about the environment and to care about things like that also was a little drastic, like surprisingly silent when we took a call up and basically white labeled the world cup in Saudi Arabia. There are trans climbers, there are gay climbers, there are climbers who in the last couple of years have been, well, we can take Iran,

for example, we've had climbers that have been deeply oppressed by their governments. We have climbers who have been punished because Russia, for example, you know, Russia does a crazy thing by invading a neighbor. And now those climbers are punished because of that action. It's surprising that we were okay with going to Saudi Arabia and thinking like, yeah, this is a good thing. Hashtag discover neon everybody. We're psyched to be here. That was a little surprising. I thought there would

be a bit more noise from everybody. Yeah. In talking to athletes and talking to people involved, there is a, the word is, is, is lost to me right now. It's on the tip of my tongue. So I'm just going to use the word acceptance. It seems like there is a reluctant acceptance that this is what pro sports is, especially if you're involved in like the Olympic world, where for whatever reason we decide we want everyone involved and we claim it's about peace.

But, you know, we ejected Russia for what, two years and now, now they're back. We're willing to have all of these national partners that have, you know, objectionable human rights records from Saudi Arabia, the China to whoever you want. You get out a ton of people on this. You get out the United States that list at different parts in their history, right? Like

that's, that's not a stretch. So it's, it's interesting to watch the climbing community, not just the athletes or the organizers, but also just the fans have to think about that and decide whether these things are important to us or not, whether you're not, you're going to watch neon.

Yeah, it's interesting. The environmental impact is a totally fair question. I would just say, um, and maybe there are people suggesting an alternative and I just haven't seen it, but I think you do have to ask a practical question like, okay, do you want international competitive climbing? Well, we need climbers from different parts of the world to meet up in the same spot to do this, right? Um, so that's just a practical limitation that has to be like,

honestly discussed. Yeah, I don't really know how we would get around that, but, um, yeah, I definitely was surprised that it was the environmental issues and not like the, the political issues that people were discussing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for elaborating on that. I feel like I didn't even know that's like the reason why they started to create the games. I

just thought they were like, oh, it's fun to host sports. Yeah. I won't like, I'm not going to like retread it or go too deep in it, but yeah, Saudi Arabia just economically has a really big question that they're having to deal with. Um, and, and there's nothing wrong with trying to rejuvenate your economy. Um, but it means for a lot of us, uh, Saudi Arabia has tons and tons and tons of money, like so much money, and it is all controlled directly by their government.

So when an event is held by a government company, you're saying, okay, we're, we want to team up with the government directly. Right? So this isn't just a competition being held, you know, by, by a gym in the Netherlands or a gym in the USA. This is a gym being held in the Netherlands that is paid for by the government of the Netherlands or the government of the USA. And it's up to us whether or not we want to take that money. Cause that paycheck came basically directly from the

kingdom of Saudi Arabia straight to the IFSC. Um, and we got to decide if we want to work with a government like that. Yeah. Very interesting food for thought. Um, okay. Last, uh, competition hot

take the new red S policy that came out. Yeah. Did you get a chance to look at that? Uh, so months ago, I looked at the IOCs, um, policy that they put out. I can't remember what it's called, but they did like kind of a recent, uh, rewrite of their red S policy. Um, interest, and I can't remember her name, but one of the big doctors in this is actually from down the road at McMaster university in Hamilton nearby. I think her last name is Mount joy. Um, so it was cool seeing like

a local connection to, to this stuff. Um, yeah, I'm really excited that we have a much more specific policy that lays out quite concrete steps for how it's supposed to work. Um, like any policy, the, what we're going to have to judge them on is how it is implemented. Um,

federations get to perform most of these tests on their own. Uh, so we have to see if federations are keeping their athletes interests in mind, or if, uh, if they're going to fudge some numbers or, or be a little less than truthful for the sake of maybe keeping some of their best athletes in play, which earns those federations money. So that's something to be wary of is if you have your best athlete winning all these goals and they're an Olympic hopeful, you might get a ton of money

from your country's government because you have an Olympic metal hopeful. Um, whereas if you take them out of play because they're unhealthy, you lose a lot of money. And that's, that's just like a genuine conflict of interest that we have to be aware of. Uh, and then lastly is how the random tests work. Um, who's going to be performing those, how often they're going to, they're going to be performed. How is that stuff going to be enforced? So I'm really optimistic that we have an improved

policy. I'm really excited that the athletes were so involved in it. That is awesome. Um, but now we have to judge it on how it's implemented. And that was really the weakness of the last one was there was a policy, but all of a sudden it stopped being enforced. And that's when all the trouble happened was when nobody was enforcing it anymore. So over the next year, the next couple of years,

let's see how it goes. So cautiously optimistic, I guess, is what I would say. Maybe I misread it, but I thought that this was done this like testing and everything was going to be done at the IFSC level. Yeah. So on the second page, um, national federation responsibilities. So step one is basically you guys do the tests. Um, and then, uh, all that stuff kind of gets sent to the IFSC basically just saying, Hey, this athlete is good or this athlete is not. Um, the random testing is,

is monitored by the IFSC. Um, but yeah, so, so there's still some national federation involvement and stuff. I just thought, I also just thought like a questionnaire was kind of funny because you could just lie, right? It's like pretty obvious what they're looking for. So, yeah, yeah. And that's, that's where that random testing is really important. We, you know,

is that random testing going to be frequent? Is it going to be impartial? Uh, and, and is it going to be enforced or is it going to be the kind of thing that athletes can just appeal to the ends of the earth and, and, and effectively like nullify it? Like, yeah, they tested me and they said I was in the orange zone or the red zone, but I'm just going to take it up with every, every judge and every court of arbitration possible and basically just get away with it for, for years, like don't

really know. So we kind of got to see it play out. We'll see how it goes in the upcoming season. And speaking of the upcoming season, I'm sure you have a lot of season predictions. I'm terrible at this. Like if I participated in like sports betting, I would be out so much money at this point, just based on what already happened in terms of Olympic selection. So I

guess, first of all, I'm not sure if you have any insight on this. I'm wondering if a lot of athletes will be pulling out of competitions leading up to the Olympics and after, and what, like how that would change the season if people aren't present.

Yeah, I don't have any insight. And I also, all I can really talk about is kind of what we saw in 29 or sorry, in 2020. In 2020, I think Alberto Ginez Lopez was the only Olympic athlete to attend like almost every comp before the Olympics itself. And so the joke was he tired himself out and was going to perform like shit. And then of course he becomes the gold medalist somehow at 2020,

of course, a year later. I don't know, but I'm sure most of them will take some time off. The early part of the season is going to be interesting depending on when athletes want to peak, obviously. So some athletes may postpone their season up to the OQS events, but I guess most of them are going to compete just as a warmup, see where they are as some like basic testing, get back in the flow of competing. It's going to be the events around the Olympics where I would expect

you start to see more and more names drop off. Whatever the last world cup is before the Olympics, there's that if you want to place a bet on like, oh, at this comp, you'll see somebody win a gold medal who's never won a gold medal before. Whatever comp that is, that's probably a pretty good bet that you're going to see a first time gold medalist at that last event before the Olympics as they

start to transition. Now I say that and some differences from last time. I don't know what Paris is like in the summer, but for Tokyo, there was a lot of concern that it was going to be very hot and we were going to have to do a lot of travel to get used to that. And so maybe since most of our athletes are European, maybe you're going to see more competitors since they're in Europe already. It might not be as big a deal. I don't know. We'll see what happens because the

circuit still does travel around quite a lot beforehand. So they might skip some continents, but that's always been something that a lot of athletes have done is skip a leg here and there based on their own personal condition. But yeah, we'll see what happens. I think attendance will be cut off a little more than usual though. Do you like watching a competition where there's lesser known competitors? No, not really. I think I'm definitely a bit of an elitist when it comes

to watching comp climbing. I really do just want to see the best six climbers over and over. Honestly, if you just gave me a women's final, just Yanya, I, Chayun, Brooke, Natalia, and Jesse Pills or pick your six, Laura or something like that, I could watch that 10 times, 10 times a row. I don't care. I don't need to see new names coming up just pipping up for a single final. I forgot Orienne, I guess. Sorry, Orienne. Yeah, that's a harsh one to miss, especially

because she just won the French national bouldering champs today. She's a great athlete. The French national bouldering champs today. Yeah, I would happily just watch that field climb over and over and over. I don't care too much about new faces. When they show up and start being regulars, that's awesome. But I don't watch a ton of national comps. A lot of people seem to enjoy the story of, wow, isn't it cool that this person is having the best comp day of their life and they

made it to finals. I don't really care about that. I much prefer to talk about these are the best climbers of this generation and let's find all the little differences between them. Let's see who needs three attempts on this kind of move and only one attempt on that kind of move. That's the stuff I love is the very best climbers. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think a lot of people would agree with that. I think that's one of the reasons why I really want there to be a newish climber who just suddenly

explodes on the scene and then can stay there for a really long time. Because I think that would garner a lot of interest and talk within the climbing community, but also maybe outside of the climbing community and grow the sport. I just really want Serato to go really far or totally. Yeah, I think that's super fair. The athletes that I will always have a special place in my heart were the ones who debuted in 2019 because that was the first year that John and I did the

debrief. Specifically, I, Maury and Chy-Yan Suh both came out of nowhere that year. I, Maury, not so much. She only got one bronze medal or something like that, but Chy-Yan Suh, never seen her before. Yanni Garnbret just won the entire World Cup boulder season and she's a lead climber at the time. You're a lead climber. You just won the whole boulder season. Now you're coming to lead. You're obviously going to win it all. Then this little kid from Korea absolutely destroys.

Getting to witness that was amazing. I think you may find, I don't know which year was your first if it was last season, but my guess is you may end up developing a connection with somebody like Serato the same way that I feel for Chy-Yan where it's like, oh, you came up the same year I did. For that reason, you're like, you mean a little bit more to me. But yeah, there will always be those new people. They'll come and it'll be a shock when they show up and it'll be amazing.

Well, the thing is they have to stay because especially with the Olympics, I guess I'm just thinking about how Michael Phelps is huge and he stayed in the scene for so many years and got so many medals. I feel like that's what we need to grow the sport and for people here. Because who watches swimming? Yeah, nobody. I think that's something we should be really conscious of is like not a lot of people watch climbing. And so I think like going back to the

format thing, it's worth rethinking our format. Maybe we don't have to feel married to this. We have room to experiment. It's really important to grow viewership. But yeah, I think having Yanya is exceptional. The only thing more you could ask for her is that she would be American. There is just like an American bump in media coverage and like, yo, the US media, if they have an incredible athlete, they will blow them up on every billboard and they will

become like international names regardless of what sport they're in. If Yanya was American, she would be a superstar. She would be Simone Biles. It would be unbelievable.

But I think Yanya is that person. Yanya is a generational talent for sure. So I think we're really lucky we have her and I expect the next like kind of five or 10 years is probably going to be more like, you know, the way climbing history, especially in women's field is you usually have like two or three athletes that are all right at the top together and no one is necessarily dominant. So I think this Yanya period will slowly trickle off and you'll have a couple names.

But I think enjoy Yanya while she lasts as being like the singular dominant athlete, because it may be a long time before we get somebody else like that. Yeah, I guess the only issue is that she's not American. Yeah, exactly. Maybe we can convince her to, yo, get her to marry an American guy, get over there and yeah, we'll do whatever we have to. Yeah. Be good for the sport.

Yeah. Who are your favorites for the Olympics? It's much harder on the men's side. For the women's, I would, there are caveats to all these things always, so I'm not even going to bother. Yanya Garbritt is my pick for women's lead. I think it would be silly to pick anybody other than Alexandra Miroslav for women's speed.

For men's lead in Boulder, bro, I don't even like, that's such a crap shoot and that's the beauty of the men's field is like, you can make a list of seven names and they've all got a chance. I think Serato and Rakuh is looking like an excellent choice though. And then for the men's speed, I love that. I love having, it's hard for me because the two Indonesian guys, I think of them as a duo. I'm not sure I want

Kiramel or Vedrik to become like way, way, way better than the other. I love having them as this duo that are kind of neck and neck and win for their own different reasons and have different personalities. So I don't, I would really like it if it was an Indonesian one too. And of course, we already know that that's not going to happen because they're not both going to be at the Olympic Games. For men's speed, yeah, that's a tough one. I'm not really sure who I want to go with for that

one. Okay. I'll pander for my men's pick and speed. This one goes out to those in the know, but yeah, I'll pick Sam Watson for it because you Americans could really use a win. That would help us a lot, frankly, as a sport. So you're my pick. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's less likely on the lead and bolder side. Actually, that reminds me, one of the surprises for me qualifying for the Olympics was, I think, the fact that I was

calling so early. I mean, eventually, sure, but I didn't know he was having, I mean, he wasn't having like a super great season. No, this was a terrible season for the American men, like, yeah, for, well, American men in Boulder and lead specifically, not so much speed, but yeah. Yeah. Was there any other athlete that you were like surprised about qualifying? I think I would probably say like for the lead and stuff, I think really just Jesse Pills being

right at the top. That's probably the one name that I didn't quite expect. Like I thought that top three would be more along the lines of like Yanya I. Brooke or Yanya Brooke or Yan or something like that. So Jesse is always like right there on the edge. And of course she's always relevant whenever she's in a final, but I think she would have been like, like fourth, fifth or sixth for me. But yeah, I think with a lot of these events, like especially in the combined,

I don't feel too surprised anymore at most of the results. Yeah. I don't know. Okay. Yeah. I think for me, as a newish viewer, I know Jacob is super decorated, but I just like haven't seen him compete that much the past couple of years. And so I did not know he was going to, yeah, I didn't know he was going to qualify so early.

Yeah. I think Jacob is, is one of the unsung heroes and the, I think the time you should, like, I don't think there's any content around this, but he did, he won seven lead world cups in a row in 2011. He would have been 21 years old and he was competing against guys that were like, kind of like six to 10 years older than him. And he absolutely dominated that season. He didn't win the world championships because it was like Ramon, like one of the Spanish guys that won that.

But if, you know, like if Yanya's, if Yanya six in a row was impressive in 2019, like Jacob is right up there winning seven out of seven in a row, but I think it was like a 10 world cup season in 2011. Like there used to be like way more world cups. A lot of these years you would like fit in 10, 10 lead world cups in one year plus a world championships. Yeah. And I think he's, I think that's what was kind of messed up is Jacob Schubert's peak. His like peak in terms of

metal count per season was 13 years ago. Yeah, that's crazy. And he's going in a still as an Olympic favorite at this time, right? Like there he's not, he's, it's not worth underestimating him like at any corner. He can turn up whenever. And I'm not necessarily saying he's consistent because he isn't, but Charlie Bosco like kind of mentioned leading up to the last Olympics that, that Jacob just has like a big game player mentality. He suits up for the big moments.

And when it comes to world championships, he is ready on those days. I think you have to go back like over like 12 years before you find a lead world championship where Jacob wasn't first or second, the guy shows up. He is unbelievable. So I wouldn't necessarily put them as my bet to win the world cup. I just said it would be probably Serato and Raku, right? But not going to be shocked to become second or third or first. You never know, man. He's, he's incredible. Okay. Yeah. Really

good to learn about the, the history of competitions. I feel like you were a great person to ask about all these things. So yeah, going into the discord questions, we have a couple here.

So do you think there is an absence of professional climbing media and our non-professional channels doing an adequate job at filling that space? What do we need to do to get content to the next level? I don't think there's a lack of climbing media. I think there's a lot of like really good climbing media. I think as much as like the, you know, us being like a fashion item is kind of annoying. And I know that will die off and like Gucci and whatever, they're not going to

do climbing stuff in a couple of years. This is a fad and we're not going to matter to them anymore. I think the public is generally interested in like climbing media. I think climbing outside is beautiful and the personalities are incredible. And that kind of adventure content is standout. And we have so many good people involved in, in climbing media in general. But if it is narrowed to competition, the climbing media, then it's obviously a really different question.

The hard part is like, there's not a lot of people doing it. I'm really glad you're here doing some of it. Like we need everybody we can get for real, right? Like every voice matters. But the hard part is like how many of us are doing it as a living, right? You know, John Bergman, he has his, he's in a lot of different types of climbing media, not all competition to try and make things work. You know, Delaney Miller also is not just competition climbing. When she does comp stuff,

it's unreal. But she has to do a lot of like outdoor stuff as well. And I'm sure she enjoys it actually. I shouldn't make it sound like she, she's like just a comp person. Same thing with Natalie Berry. Like she has to straddle both worlds. Like, you know, she's doing the hill climbing stuff in the UK, which sounds to be just awful. But she's also possibly right now, like the journalist of records when it comes to competitive climbing media in English at least.

So yeah, there's not a lot of people doing it. Most of us are casuals. Like I do this in my part time, like for half a year at a time. And again, this isn't your living either at the moment, right? So I think, and just to go back to what I said to you earlier, like I used to be really critical of lots of different commentators in climbing. Almost every single commentator that

there has been in like the last 15 years, I've had different problems with them. And then eventually you come to realize that this one person is the only commentator for like world cup climbing. And it is totally unreasonable for me to expect Matt Groom or Charlie Bosco or whoever to be exactly the kind of commentator that I want. There's lots of different styles of commentary. There are lots of different voices that people might like. Some people like talking about

history. Some people like talking about movements. Some people like the personal stories. Some people just have different inflection. And so long as our sport has a single commentator, there's always going to be people that think there's someone better than Matt Groom or whoever else is doing it, but it is just one guy and he is burdened with having to be the best he possibly

can be for all of the people watching. And I think that's just like an important reminder that the more people like you or like me who are willing to add their voice and create content in competitive climbing, there are people that were waiting for your voice and waiting for your interviews. They didn't like my stuff. They didn't like somebody else's stuff, but your stuff is exactly what they wanted. Right. And the same thing could be said for some people for my stuff

and so on. And so I think if anybody is interested in any way of creating any media around competition climbing, absolutely do it. Whether it's like, whether you want to do like data journalism and visualizing stuff like Rory is at Inside Climbing. If you want to do, you kind of mentioned like this, your angle is sort of, I'm new here. I want to know everything about what's going on. Like get me in the loop. To my thing, which is a lot more kind of lately, it's been

commentary and analysis and criticism and stuff like that. Like we need everybody we can get. So even if you can do one YouTube video, you know, a year, or if you're writing a column for a blog, like hop in there, let us know that you're doing it. We'll share it. Like every single person makes a difference to, to making this the kind of sport that more people want to watch. So yeah, to answer the question, no, I don't think there is enough competition climbing media. And that's

always going to be hard because there's no money in it. But if you've got the time and you got the time and you got the interest, please, please hop in. Cause yeah, every voice will have some people that want to hear it. So please do it. Yeah, that's really nice. I think that's a really good way of putting it. I don't think I thought of it in that way. I, I guess the way I felt was kind of like, especially with the, like the podcast coming out on the official IFSC channel,

I was like, oh, well they're like doing this. Like maybe I don't need to do it anymore. No, don't, don't stop. Don't stop. Like, oh, I mean, Mac room, he's great to talk to. I'd love to listen and talk, but yeah, that's, that's a really good way of putting it. Um, next, uh,

or I guess last discord question. Um, what do you think about the role of gyms as a place that people start careers and how do you see the role of that space for the next generation of teachers? I'm going to pull from Chris Danielson and I'm just going to go with something he, so there's a guy, if I'm being too pedantic, I apologize, but I'm just going to roll with the angle. There's a root setter in the U S named Chris Danielson. Um, he used to be a really big name in organizing

the competitions in the U S he was really involved with USA climbing. And if I remember right, he was the guy that really started the root setting, uh, accreditation process in the USA, like being a level one root setter or a level four root setter or so on. And he wrote, was it like a gym? I can't remember if this was a blog post or like a, uh, uh, an introductory, like chapter to like a, how to root set book or something, but he made this great point that I hadn't thought of. Um, and

it's really simple. He just said, like, if you want to start root setting, start root setting. And his point, which he fleshed out, I'm pretty sure was there's nothing stopping you from going up to a boulder wall at your gym, a spray wall or a set wall, whatever, and use the holds that are there to just make up a climb for yourself or for your friends. There's nothing stopping you from doing that. Um, as more and more gyms have spray walls and kilter boards and all that kind of stuff,

it's even easier to have like a really dense area of holds. Right. But if you want to learn root setting, it's not so much about turning wrenches as it is being able to look at a wall and predict movement and see like, where do I need holds in order to make different moves happen? Um, and his point was, if you want to start root setting, don't wait to be hired. Don't wait for somebody to, to, you know, his root setting is really tough to get into professionally. There's

not a lot of spots to do it. Just start root setting, start being the guy that's put out more boulder problems on your spray wall or your kilter wall than anyone else in your gym. Just start doing it. Um, and the same thing kind of goes for coaching. If you climb with friends, start paying attention to what feedback matters to you when you're climbing. Like when somebody gives you a really good tip or a really good hint, why didn't you see that? Why couldn't you,

you know, uh, why hadn't that come to you before they said it? And what advice can you give to other people? Um, if you're bringing a friend to the gym for the first time, how are you going to cater to their experience to make them want to come back a second time? Are you going to be the person that walks up to like, you know, let's say, yeah, like, okay, you bring a friend into the gym. They've never climbed before. They're probably going to be climbing like VBs, V zeros, V ones.

Are you going to go up and climb every VB V zero V one and flash it before they get a chance to get on it and they get on those and start falling? Is that going to be like how you present them to a climb or are you going to say, yeah, climbing is really fun. No matter how long you've done it, it's always hard and you'll let them climb the V zero and fall on it. And you will climb your V four or your V seven and you'll fall on it and you'll help them relate to the fact that like, yeah,

I'm better than you. I've been doing this longer, but don't be embarrassed about falling. Right. I think the biggest thing with climbing gyms is that whatever thing about climbing you're interested in, the gym is just a big sandbox for the most part. And you can start exploring whatever pathway you're interested in without being hired, without, you know, calling yourself a coach or without

calling yourself, you know, a gym owner or a root setter. You can just start paying attention to like what people's experience in gyms are and start paying attention to how you set boulders. And you can start your own career just by getting that practice and doing those things. So for people that are psyched about working in climbing, don't wait until you get a job

to try being a root setter or try being a coach. Like just do that stuff with the people that you climb with anyways, and see if it's something you like, see if it's something you're good at, and just express yourself through being a climber at the gym rather than needing to be staff necessarily. And if you do love it, I hope you do get a job out of it. I hope you manage to get paid and get to do the stuff you love. I know that not many people get to do what I've had a chance to do

just because there's not that many gyms and not that many jobs at each gym. Like that's hard. But do it anyways, if you're psyched, just do it anyways. Gyms are for you to play in. So do that, I guess. Yeah. Awesome. Well put. I think that's a great note to end on. Very inspiring. Thank you. Very inspiring. Thank you. But yeah, I think that's all the questions I had. Thank you so

much for joining me. And anything you want to shout out or let people know where they can find you? I'll leave your podcast link below, of course. Yeah, you can. If you haven't seen Plastic Weekly on YouTube, subscribe to it and watch the videos that you like. Aside from that, if you watched Ginny's podcast, just keep watching it. Keep watching the comps. Enjoy it. If there's stuff you like, then tell people about it. Make sure people in climbing feel good about what they're

doing. And if there's stuff you don't like, consider doing something yourself. Let's build this thing. Let's do it. Awesome. Okay, great. Thank you so much. And it was great to have this chat. Yeah, thanks Ginny. That was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for making it to the end of the podcast. Don't forget to like and subscribe if you enjoyed. Otherwise, you are a super fake climber.

If you're listening on a podcasting platform, I'd appreciate if you rate it five stars and you can continue the discussion on the free competition climbing discord linked in the description. Thanks again for listening.